Linux 3.16 Debuts Improving Samsung ARM Support

August 4, 2014

By
Sean Michael Kerner

Linus Torvalds released the fourth major Linux kernel of 2014 this week with the debut of Linux 3.16 on August 3.

As always there is no shortage of driver related updates in the new kernel and there are also a few interesting features too. Perhaps the most interesting is the unified control group hierarchy which is a feature that Jon Corbert of LWN has done a masterful job of explaining what it does. With Linux 3.16 and beyond there is even more fine grain feature for control and the how users are grouped for that control.

In terms of chip architecture, once again ARM keeps getting better support. With Linux 3.16 Samsung Exynos system on chips.

"We've been holding back Samsung from adding new SoC support until they sorted out their multi-platform support, which they now have done," Linux kernel developer Olof Johansson wrote in his Git pull message to Linus Torvalds. "We're very happy to be able to build an Exynos-enabled kernel together with the other platforms now (Tegra, i.MX, OMAP, and all the others). This also means that their slight backlog of SoC support is now picked up so we've got a bunch of clock drivers and other things for their 3250 and 5410/5420/5800 series of chips."

With Linux 3.16 now out, the merge window for the Linux 3.17 kernel is now open

Torvalds wrote:

"So nothing particularly exciting happened this week, and 3.16 is out there.

And as usual (previous release being the exception) that means that the merge window for 3.17 is obviously open. And for the third time in a row, the timing sucks for me, as I have travel coming up the second week of the merge window. Many other core developers will be traveling too, since it's just before the kernel summit in Chicago.

So we'll see how the next merge window goes, but I'm not going to worry about it overmuch

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Linux Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist